Keynote: Expectations of beauty in technology

Excerpt from Ross Dawson’s keynote speech to a major telecoms firm’s management team on expectations of beauty in technology.

Full Transcription: Expectations of beauty in technology

Ross Dawson:

A fundamental expectation that we have is that of
elegance, of usability, and indeed of beauty.
It is interesting in the world of computers,
originally personal computers were all in beige boxes,
the ugliest color known to humans.
At a certain point, in 1998, when the iMac came out…
Before that, they fell into the same trap.
The original Macintoshes were all in these beige boxes.
They had elegant interfaces, yes,
but the boxes were in these ugly colors.
Suddenly the iMac was a revelation,
suddenly we had a series of beautiful bright colors
And now we are starting to see that Apple again,
and some other technology companies now
show us that technology must be elegant,
it must be beautiful, it must be usable.
This is particularly important in enterprise technology
where the expectations of individuals when they enter organizations
are shaped by the beauty – literally – of the technology they are using,
the beauty of the world around them.
So enterprise technology must be beautiful.
That is a basic expectation of individuals,
of people working in organizations.